AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual-Core Processor Review. Page 7

We are beginning our investigation of the desktop dual-core processors performance. In this review we are going to tell you everything about the AMD dual-core solution: general info, performance tests, overclocking experiments, power consumption and heat dissipation analysis.

Here the test is emulating the user’s work when he is receiving an e-mail in Outlook 2002 with a number of documents in a zip-file attached to it. While the files are being scanned for viruses with the VirusScan 7.0, the user is looking through the e-mails and makes noted in the Outlook calendar. After that the user checks a corporate web-site and some documents through Internet Explorer 6.0.

In this test the hypothetical user is editing some test in Word 2002 and uses Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6 to convert an audio file into a text document. The document is then converted into pdf-format in Acrobat 5.0.5. After that the prepared document is used to create a PowerPoint 2002 presentation. Athlon 64 X2 wins again.

In the next test we see the following situation: the user opens a database in Access 2002 and creates a number of requests. The documents are archived with WinZip 8.1. The request results are exported into Excel 2002 and a diagram is created. Although dual-core architecture again shows its clear benefits here, Pentium 4 processors manage to win the round.

All in all, I could say the following about the use of dual-core processors in office work. The applications of this kind are very rarely optimized for multi-threaded workload. That is why a dual-core processor will hardly guarantee you any performance gain in a given individual application. However, if your work implies that there would be resource-hungry applications running in the background, it could definitely make a lot of sense to have a dual-core processor.